St. Katherine’s

Ever since I went to Hellenic Republic, I’ve been obsessed with Greek food! So when Nick suggested if I wanted to try out St. Katherine’s, without any hesitation I responded “YES PLEASE!”
Now, I’ve been dying to go to St. Katherine’s for as long as I can remember, so I was really excited to visit, and also excited to finally meet Nick’s beautiful wife, Jenny! Big shout out to Jenny and Nick :)

Now driving to St Katherine’s for dinner was a bit of a pain because of the parking. I found myself driving around in circles, but finally found parking at the back of some buildings (Parking on the main road has parking restrictions).
When I arrived, Nick and Jenny was already there and a waitress was introducing to them the drinks menu! As she had only just started, she decided to wait til I sat down and re-introduce the drink and dinner menu.
Basically at St Katherine’s you can go A la Carte, or go for the Sharing Menu: 1.”Quick Kat’s” 2 course menu, 2.”When mum feeds me” which is where they create a menu for the table around what is best in their kitchen, or the 3. Ultimate which is a four course of all their specials. We decided that the Ultimate was a bit too much for us (So very glad that! as you’ll see when you read through this blog post), so we settled for the “When mum feeds me.”

Whilst we were waiting for our drinks and food to arrive, we sat there discussing about my food blogging journey, and I remembered at one point where I said “I dont really take notes when I dine out”….Now, usually I don’t have much of a problem with remembering things so I usually don’t take notes, but for that night at St Katherine’s there were so many dishes that I cant remember them, plus some of the items are probably not on their regular menu, so I couldn’t research the names of the dishes! I think it might be the turning point for me… I need to start taking notes. *sigh* So my apologies in advance for the missing information! :(

I think I’m obsessed with Cranberry juice. Lately, almost everywhere I go, if there’s cranberry juice I end up choosing that over wine.
I like the colour of the juice, as it’s a vibrant pinkish red; it’s refreshing and it has a tart-ish taste :)
Nick on the other hand ordered lager beer, and was presented CISK lager beer, which is a Maltese beer. Jenny on the other hand ordered red wine – not sure what she ordered, because I didn’t take notes! :(

In all honesty St Katherine’s sharing menu are great value! The food arrived in a very steady flow, and I must say by the end of our dinner we were very full! Well at least for myself anyway.

The first thing that arrived on our table was a brown paper bag. I looked at it with great curiosity wondering what could possibly be in the paper bag…
It was in fact freshly made turkish bread!, sadly I only took a photo of the paper bag.. but not the content of it? (Face palms) – Don’t ask why – I don’t know!
The turkish bread was served with fava, split pea dip with shallot, caper and red wine vinegar. (Thanks St. Katherine’s for letting me know! – Received a tweet from them :D)

Next up was the fried whitebait served with Taramosalata, which is a white cod roe dip. I remembered having the white cod roe dip back at Hellenic Republic and loved it!

When I was younger I remembered my Granny frying whitebait in a wok until very crisp and seasoning it with a lot of salt, and served with plain congee for breakfast! Sadly, I haven’t had whitebait in a very long time and only recently when I went to St. Katherines, did I get to have whitebait again. Of course it’s not crazy salty, as it was in fact very lightly seasoned. It wasn’t very crisp though – I would have preferred it to be extra crispy :)

Ahhhh… The meatballs! This one was voted our favourite. The lamb meat balls were incredibly moist yet full of flavour and texture. The meatballs were served with a rich tomato sauce, crumbed feta, parsley and toasted slithered almonds! It was an absolute delight!

Next up was a bowl of roast cauliflower. I really cannot comment much on this because I don’t think I really touched it, maybe a flowerette or two.

Next up is St. Katherine’s famed KFC – Katherine’s Fried Chicken, served with BBQ Sauce and Kewpie Mayo. Of course the chicken is of premium quality, and you definitely cannot compare the quality with KFC because that would be a real insult. The chicken was fried until golden brown as you can see in the photo below, yet maintaining the juiciness and tenderness of the chicken. Now, I’m obsessed with Kewpie Mayo, and I believe that anything with Kewpie Mayo added will make the dish taste even better. The creaminess of the kewpie mayo and the sweetness of the BBQ Sauce definitely complemented the fried chicken well.
Having said all that, I personally think that Touché Hombre’s fried chicken is way better!

OMG! More food, and there’s more to come!
Next up is the wood fired oven pide ground lamb. This pide is definitely a must try – the ground lamb is once again very moist, and flavoured really well with the tomato, garlic and parsley. Encasing the ground lamb is a doughy and crusty pide. You definitely need to squeeze some of the lemon juice on top of the ground lamb to heighten the flavour! Loved this! :)

By this time, the table was feeling quite full already, I swear I was ready to yell STOP! STOP!, no more food! But I still breathed in and tried the other dishes.
Both the grilled rainbow trout, and off the rotisserie lamb and chicken came to the table at the same time.
The grilled rainbow trout was grilled perfectly, and like Jenny and Nick said, the fish was grilled perfectly as it was not undercooked or too dry. The crumb things you see on top of the grilled rainbow trout, I believe that is dehydrated shankleesh, which is a type of cow’s milk or sheep’s milk cheese that has been dehydrated.
As for the off the rotisserie lamb and chicken, there’s nothing special to report about them, other than it’s moist. It doesn’t have much flavour and it’s best to dip it into the taramosalata that comes with the dish.

*sigh* but wait! There’s more! (Georgie, really, you feed us well! too well!)
The habibi rice pilaf, I would have eaten more had I not been so full from the other the dishes, because I actually quite enjoyed it. The pilaf was cooked perfectly where each grain of rice are separated and puffed :) The toasted almonds, coriander and parsley gave it extra texture and flavour to the rice pilaf, but sadly only a few spoonfuls ended up in my stomach because I was just too full to eat any more!

Leaves! The cos lettuce was dressed with a tangy dressing and topped with sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, pomegranate and dehydrated shankleesh. The shankleesh gives it that extra flavour to the salad. Now, I’m not a fan of lettuce, but I actually quite enjoyed this salad because the cos lettuce were dressed really well with the tangy dressing.

At this point everyone on the table needed some sort of drink to help digest their food. Jenny and Nick both ordered a Moroccan mint tea, and was presented with this:
Isn’t it beautiful? A glass cup with a fresh mint leaf so that it heightens the flavour of the tea! It also comes with a small cube of cake :)

In all honesty I should have ordered a cup of green tea, but… NOOOOOO I went for hot chocolate. Nick definitely chuckled when he heard me order it, but he expected it, because he knows that I ALWAYS order hot chocolate regardless. Period.
Whilst the hot chocolate did look beautiful, sadly it was a very below standard cup of hot chocolate. It was incredibly milky and I barely taste the chocolate :( As for the cube of cake… I accidentally dropped it, so I will never know what it taste like! haha.

Now now… like they all say, there’s ALWAYS room for dessert. All foodies are born with a second stomach (You can cut me up to check…and if there’s none, please transplant an artificial one now please!) so that they can always fit dessert in :D Of course there’s no way on earth that I would skip dessert anyway.

The two desserts that we had at St. Katherine’s were both spectacular!
First up – Choc chip mousse hot cherry jam doughnut. Oh my lord, where have you been all my life Mr Doughnut!?
The beautifully sugar dusted doughnut was served piping hot and filled with hot cherry jam! One needs to take care and not gobble it up or your mouth will end up getting very burned. Of course, I, a true lady did not do that! :P I took slow and small bites of the doughnut to savour the delicious doughnut.

Once that part of the dessert was finished, the next layer is the mixed seeds & nuts served with chilled choc chip mousse that has caramel at the very bottom.
In my opinion the dessert is well thought out, and I don’t expect any less from Georgie and his team! The mixed seeds & nuts are definitely for texture, and the chilled choc chip mousse and caramel I consider as salvation point for those who gobbled up their doughnut greedily and their mouth burning in pain :P haha. Jokes aside, I think the piping hot doughnut and the chilled choc chip mousse are a great pairing and balances each other, and I would have been quite satisfied eating this any day! Now, for those who know me, will know that I’m no fan of caramel, I never have, and never will be, but I still managed to eat all of the caramel, which says a lot!

Excuse me what? there’s more dessert?! As if that doughnut dessert wasn’t enough, we were presented a plate of warm chocolate brownie served with hot oozing chocolate fudge and vanilla ice-cream. Oh it was so decadent.
Surprisingly, although it may look really rich, it didn’t feel that right at all! The chocolate brownie was at the right level of sweetness and wasn’t overly rich, and even with the chocolate fudge it was well balanced. :)

St. Katherine’s is definitely a great place for value, the staff are professional, it’s family friendly place and the food tastes great. Oh, and you may even spot a celebrity too ;) (Grant Hackett – former Australian Swimmer)
Having said that I personally prefer Hellenic Republic. You can read my facebook exclusive review of Hellenic Republic here. (I met Georgie on that day too! :D)

The moment we stepped outside it started to rain! Thank you very much to my foodie partners Jenny and Nick for visiting St. Katherine’s! Definitely had a great time, and will definitely organise another dinner sometime in the near future! And also thank you for walking me to my car! :)

LOL! Same thing happened to me when I went to Hellenic. I rolled out, but went to get more food… Hahha :X But I had an excuse because I was going to Malaysia at that time.
I do actually prefer Hellenic Republic, but St Katherine seems like a bigger venue :) But very hard to find parking though :(

Looked like a massive greek feast! Love how your photos point out what each food item/ingredient is, very informative and descriptive which makes it more appealing for a reader to want to try even more!

Pinkfinity:
It was indeed a massive greek feast. It seems like the case for every Greek place you go to too!
:) Thank you for your positive feedback on my photos, and I’m glad you like my photos! I do spend a lot of time on it!